Theory of Colour plays with the idea of the existence of a set of basic rules for combining colors in order to present, in a sarcastic fashion, the issue of the discursive or aesthetic assertions that define social distribution and exclusion on the basis of skin pigmentation. This exhibition emerges from an investigation into contemporary art produced over the past ten years in which artists from different generations and countries (South Africa, Germany, the United States, Mexico, Venezuela, Belgium, France, Peru, Argentina, Brazil and Spain) deal with the issue of racism. These practices reveal a diversity of approaches — nationalism, scientism, homogenization, exoticization, colonization, exploitation, sexualization — which display the complex web that underlies racism.

Theory of Colour is neither a historical overview nor an attempt at mapping, but an exercise that questions a logic that persists yet cannot be analyzed as a universal category. Racism is the results of a singular operation of exclusion that is implemented in a particular form in different times and places, where the subject of exclusion is part of a framework of social distribution that functions as an enclave for the division of labor and wealth. Theory of Colour peers into this history that produces its singularity with each repetition, in search of catalysts that reveal what kind of operations are carried out from a contemporary art perspective and consider whether, from this viewpoint, it is possible to open up a cultural space for debate.

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